The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Large-scale production of radioisotopes is now possible, necessitating safe storage of large quantities of the irradiated materials. Generally, the radioisotopes comprise pellets, wires, disks, etc., of a desired isotopic material, e.g., cobalt, that has been irradiated to have a desired radioactivity. In many instances, these radioisotopes will be used to construct, or assemble, many different customer specified source capsules having many different desired activity profiles, i.e., many different containers having one or more radioisotopes sealed therein to provide various desired activity profiles. The operations required for such encapsulation must be done in a shielded facility and require large amounts of repetitive work to be performed.
Traditionally, an inventory of various isotopes is stored in a plurality of storage structures. Particularly, rods or tubes in which the radioisotopes are produced are stored in a plurality of radioactive shielded storage structures. To assemble, or construct, a source capsule having a particular customer requested activity profile, radioisotopes of various radioactivity, from various storage structures, are placed in radioactive shielded casks, removed from the respective storage structures. The casks are then transported to a separate assembly facility, commonly referred to as a ‘hot cell’. Once the various radioisotopes have been transported to the hot cell, the casks will be opened to access the respective radioisotopes. The desired amount of each respective radioisotope will be then removed and sealed in a capsule, e.g., a stainless steel container, to provide a source capsule having the desired activity profile. The unused radioisotopes will then be returned to the casks. The casks will then be removed from the hot cell and transported back to the respective storage structures.
Thus, the process of loading the various radioisotopes stored in the various storage structures in casks, transporting the casks to the hot cell, opening the casks to access the radioisotopes, assembling the source capsules, repacking the casks and returning the casks to the storage structures is a cumbersome and time consuming task.